Colette wrote:It seems like a lot of work but if someone is willing to do it then sure why not. If worst comes to worst we can always junk it and go back to the old ways.

I mean, I'd be willing to give it a go if there was genuine interest and it actually got used (tried out). I kept the original work file, of course, so it would be trivial to modify it to our purposes. The hard part is inputting the info (which might require some knowledge gathering from the players themselves if the wiki doesn't contain info...and other stuff like that).

The spacetime-disrupting powers of ABS mean that if you want to have a war with somebody, there will be a way. Either rifts in space will open between your empires, or teleportation, or magic, or superscience, or one day you wake up and you're temporospatial neighbors.

Natalya wrote:What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of how banned you are.

I kinda figured. It's easy to get caught up in the logistics of a thing, I guess. I also wondered about Rekonstruktions. With history being broken and all, it seems possible that the next one could wipe out all traces that there ever even was a Galactic War, or that there were ever Space Empires, really.

You know what might be better, instead of a big overall map, is smaller maps of individual fronts, whether your front in question spans a single system or a hundred. That way we could let the maps grow organically according to the story, rather than trying to force the stories to fit to something static. I don't need to know the names and locations of all 400 planets in your empire if only three of them will ever matter.

Natalya wrote:What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of how banned you are.

stubby wrote:You know what might be better, instead of a big overall map, is smaller maps of individual fronts, whether your front in question spans a single system or a hundred. That way we could let the maps grow organically according to the story, rather than trying to force the stories to fit to something static. I don't need to know the names and locations of all 400 planets in your empire if only three of them will ever matter.

I rambled a bit, but yeah, this is what I was driving at. The other planets/systems/etc. are just parts of the narrative, background fluff. We only need to know they exist, not really any of their details. Focus is key, I think. Sort of zoom in on where the story is happening. I don't think it would be too hard to modify, sure.

IVhorseman wrote:Either way, the template is totally awesome as fuck. Do you have a blank version of it at all? because we could just overlay the old map under this one and *boom* we got a way cooler map

Yeah, I keep all my work files in case I want to edit later. I'll pull something simple together and throw it up here a little later. Right now, I've got a ton of homework to do.

Rereading my original post, it occurred to me, to my embarrassment that I neglected to mention that my map was inspired by the Dragon Empire map found in Dragonstar by Fantasy Flight.

I did create mine from scratch and I tried to create as many of my own designs as possible though. I'm not sure how much you can claim grid design under copyright law, anyway. And maps are even weirder where copyrights are concerned as well. But still. I intended to point that out originally, regardless of all my changes/creations.

* * *

So, I created a basic map here that tries to embrace Stubby's idea concerning battlefronts. This is still a considerably larger scale than you hinted at but I think it could be easily scaled in or out. I redesigned some of the elements (obviously) because I wanted something we could tie unequivocally to BrikWars and because I didn't want to recreate the same map. I borrowed the Logo from the Banner. And, as before, there are a handful of bad jokes scattered about.

This bit got me thinking about what I was actually doing. So I wrote this based on what I saw in the map:

In a distant sector of space, now hauntingly called the Devoid Sector, three ancient intergalactic armies vie for dominance and control of the sector’s precious and newly discovered resource, Ecto-115. The element is naturally occurring within only a handful of systems and, interestingly, within each member of the terrifying Zeitgeisteskrankheit, a maddened and wraithlike people driven by a thirst for vengeance and an abominable hunger that can only be sated with the warmth of the living. The Devoid Sector, once upon a time, was their home and they were a peaceful race of builders and innovators. Their original name is now lost to history but it is known that they soared through the stars on the wings of gilded technologies spreading the goodwill of construction to various peoples throughout the star systems. Now, however, following the brutal invasion of the Gunnar-Grim a few hundred years ago, that message is no longer part of their deathly agenda and the memory of their great technologies lie forever locked in the spectral forms of their ghostly starships. Now, they float through the void and debris fields where their homes used to be, as cold as the space between the stars, hunting the unwary.

The Gunnar-Grim in the Devoid Sector are of the Jormangandr Clan, who long ago became separated from their main fleet and were left to wander between galaxies. Over time, the space dwarves became severely hardened by their ordeals. Encounters with other races often led to strife for the already warlike dwarves. With constant battles and continuous operation, their great behemoth of a warship, the Starforge Jormangandr, took a hell of a beating. One of less than one hundred of the universe’s largest and mightiest ships, capable of both creating and destroying planets at full capacity, it had been entrusted to the Jormangandr in ancient times by the Mountain King himself, creator god to the dwarven race. Thus, when the great ship limped into what is now the Devoid Sector on its last legs, the Clan wasted no time in availing themselves of any resource they could find to repair the monstrosity. Luckily for them, they had stumbled into a very rich sector of space indeed, full to bursting with life and creative energies. Unluckily for everything else, this boundless wonder merely served as food to feed to the colossal starbeast and it consumed ever greater amounts of material in order to return itself to the height of its power. The other races banded together and mounted an assault on the terrible thing but, even in such a weakened state, their attacks did little good and its dwarven masters were fierce in its defense. In the span of a few short years, the Gunnar-Grim had committed an interstellar genocide, wiping entire star systems and their populations from existence.

However, that same rich energy which sated the Starforge would be the very damnation of the Jormangandr Clan. There was a deep resonance to the power on which the dwarves did not reckon. The massively creative energies, so corrupted by the titanic psychic trauma done to its most masterful manipulators, turned quite deadly and locked the souls of the dead into a hyperphasic state of reality, imbuing them with the sheer, unadulterated force of destruction. They became the Geist and the vulgarity of their birth sprang out like a shockwave through reality. Where the wave touched, often there grew the Element later named Ecto-115 in various forms. A dangerous, volatile, and utterly destructive element, it has never been used to any other purpose. In fact, as far as anyone can tell, it can’t be used to any other purpose. The Clan does not yet regret their actions, and probably never will, and sees Ecto-115 as their proprietary right. They’ve begun rebuilding the sector, in their own image, but are hindered at every turn by the Geist (who are ever more enraged by the Clan’s continued presence and its constant attempts at mining their essence) and the newly arrived Ketir-Iah Empire.

The Ketir-Iah are a very old intergalactic empire who have held sway in many parts of the universe for as long as anyone can remember. A potent sorcery runs in the bloodlines of its peoples and the elder race long held authority using the reality-altering, godlike power in its veins. They were seemingly unstoppable. Eons ago, however, a rebellion rose up, captured several royal houses, and performed unspeakable blood sciences on them. They were able to discern and steal the power for themselves. With time, the rebellion grew into a powerful empire in its own right and doled out that power in small, manageable segments to all those who stood against the ancients. The Ketir-Iah were beset on all sides in many galaxies and so they were forced to perform an extravagant ritual which cursed their own magic. While the rewards for using the magic were still prodigious, the punishment was equally as severe. They waited and refrained from its use while their enemies crippled themselves with borrowed power. The Ketir-Iah’s sorcery remains cursed to this day, however, and they have been forced to seek other routes to power. In recent years, they learned of Ecto-115 and its devastating properties. They were well placed to send an expeditionary army into the Devoid Sector after it. The army found itself quickly locked in a heated struggle between the Geist, the Jormangandr, and the fiercely violent and defensive Bystander systems. The army thought to retreat but the pounding of the Geist Ectocannons showed them an exponential power they were loathe to leave behind. To their delight, though, they’ve also discovered that their sorcery is the only weapon anyone knows of that can harm the Geist. Though they must be extraordinarily careful in its execution, they’ve decided to stay and attempt to harvest the element.

All the while, the crisis in Devoid Sector continues to build and it may come to pass that no one survives the resulting explosion.

Looking at the old wiki and a handful of scattered posts, I'd make a guess and say that the Immortal/Scythian conflict is one of the largest in the brikverse. Accurate? If my Devoid example seems alright and there is still interest, I could draw up a map of that front.

Also, any criticisms? Ways I could improve the map structure or design?

Well I agree with some of the replies here, for instance new people like me come in and completely make up our own star systems, so its bound to get confusing if we make ANY starmap at all. I think its epically cool though. (Cheesian homeworld in system Shabalaka, star system close to krysto region)